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Friday,
June 5, 1942
...One
of the most surprising side-effects of this war is the
clinging to life, the almost total absence of suicides. People
die in great numbers of starvation, the typhus epidemic or
dysentery, they are tortured and murdered by the Germans in
great numbers, but they do not escape from life by their own
desire. On the contrary, they are tied to life by all their
senses, they want to live at any price and to survive the war.
The tensions of this historic world conflict are so great that
all wish to see the outcome of the gigantic struggle and the
new regime in the world, the small and the great, old men and
boys. The old have just one wish: the privilege of seeing the
end and surviving Hitler.
I
know a Jew who is all old age. He is certainly about 80. Last
winter a great tragedy befell the old man. He had an only son
who was about 52. The son died of typhus. He has no other
children. And the son died. He did not marry a second time and
lived with his son. A few days ago I visited the old man. When
I left - his mind is still entirely clear - he
burst out crying and said: "I want to see the end of the
war, even if I live only another half an hour!"
Why
should the old man wish so much to stay alive? There it is:
even he wants to live, "if only half an hour" after
the last shot is fired. This is the burning desire of all the
Jews.
A.
Levin, Mi-Pinkaso shel ha-More mi-Yehudiya ("From
the Notebook of the Teacher from Yehudiya"), Beit Lohamei
ha-Getaot, 1969, p. 70. |
